


There's a Clause for That

by Magik (magikfanfic)



Series: Future Adventures of Yorkes and Stein - Avenging Verse [2]
Category: Runaways (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/Magik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chase has been in his new job for a while now. Things are mostly going well, but now he’s tackling the biggest hurdle he can: getting Gert to agree to something resembling a “formal” commitment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Clause for That

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow up to “The American Icon” and was requested by my friend who RPs Chase to my Gert. This is totally an AU in all the ways but enjoy if you want to. No warning necessary. All Marvel characters. I own nada.

Strangely enough being Captain America isn’t as hard as Chase thought it would be. It’s also not nearly as lame as it could have been, either. He suspects a big reason for both of those things is because of whatever behind the scenes machinations Gert does in what is quickly becoming a strange hodgepodge of roles that she plays. He’s never been able to figure out how she manages to keep so many balls in the air, but it seems effortless to her. Still. No matter how many more people keep tossing in without even asking her. 

The rest of the Avengers already knew him, of course, but just as Chase the tech guy or as Gert’s “companion”, which is a word that always make him think of that silly British time travel show that bastard Alex used to watch way back when they were kids. It’s different for them, sort of weird, when he shows up one day in a completely redesigned Captain America costume. That’s the first indication he gets that Gert didn’t tell them what was going on because he comes in and they do the classic double take, eyes on him, then their leader and then him again. It’s hilarious, and Chase can’t stop himself from laughing before reassuring them that everything’s okay, it’s not a joke and that they should all check out how good his ass looks in the spandex and leather. 

If there’s one thing that Chase has managed to keep over the years, it’s his sense of humor, which has helped him work crowds and smooth difficult situations over. Actually he sort of had to learn the last one because, as it turns out, spending your life with Gert is harder than it might look from the outside. (Or possible every bit as hard but way more rewarding than anyone might think.) Turns out that you can’t punch every single guy who calls your girlfriend a bitch even when she is being one. And Chase knows that Gert can fight her own fights but, goddamnit, he gets to have a few of them. It’s easier to handle SHIELD commanders when you can just make everyone laugh. It took forever to learn to switch the anger off and find another way. He slips. Of course he does. Things happen, and he blows up. Still. Only they’re fewer and there’s way more time in-between. Plus Gert is usually pretty good at intervening before things get dire. Just another way they work as a compliment to each other.

Like the ruckus that crops up when he joined the Avengers. After everyone gets over their initial shock, the talk starts up about who should be leading the team. Marvel Boy (how he and Gert laughed about that name when she recruited Noh) and Stature want to immediately fall in line with him. Him. As the leader of the Avengers. Because he’s Captain America and, traditionally, Cap’s the person in charge. Gert’s expression doesn’t change, but he can see her eyes wanting to roll at the very ideas being put forward. Hawkeye II, Wiccan and Speed (who have all come up the ranks with Gert) are in Gert’s corner. And all Chase wants to do is punch Marvel Boy (seriously? seriously!) in the face and tell him that if he wants to keep questioning his leader, then maybe he just needs to walk out the door, but he doesn’t. Can’t. Captain America cannot punch out his teammates. Unless they’re being controlled by Loki or something. There’s a clause for that. He knows because he asked Gert to add it.

So it’s pretty much looking like clash of the titans time when Gert just says, in that voice of hers that means all the nonsense needs to stop now or I’m going to end you, “The role of leader is not up for debate at the moment.” Everything’s finished. Done. Chase doesn’t have to punch anyone. And then there’s beer.

It’s always like that. Something happens, something strains everyone, and Gert pulls them back from the brink, reigns them in and then there’s beer and maybe swarma because they know, the pair of them, that everything cannot always be life and death. There are all these moments that you need to stop and look at, really look at, and do something with. 

He carries the ring in case one of those moments comes along. It’s not that Chase hasn’t asked before because he has. Even though he knows how she feels about marriage, he keeps asking because it’s Gert. And, no, they don’t need it, they don’t need the word or the rings or the legality or any of it, but he can’t help but want to be married to her. Then when he punches people out for calling her a bitch it can be because she’s his wife. Not the only reason, obviously, but it just feels like there’s an incomplete step waiting for them. 

So just in case she caves, he keeps the ring on him no matter how few pockets he has or how worried he gets that he’s going to drop the thing while going after the seventh generation of Ultron. It’s Gert so you can never tell when she might change her mind. It doesn’t happen often, but it can happen. Plus he’s just as stubborn as she is. They both give in inches.

They’re in Arizona with the rest of the Avengers, Karo and Nico tailing some sort of alien whose race only Karo and Gert can pronounce, and it’s a quiet night. The rest of the Avengers have nicked off to go to bed or something so it’s just him, Gert, Karo and Nico in the bar drinking and talking about old times. Gert doesn’t drink often, and she always makes the mistake of trying to keep up with him when she simply cannot metabolize it as fast so Chase has been stealing her drinks while they both pretend she doesn’t notice. Karo and Nico are sitting so close that their hair overlaps and makes them look like one person, which is how it’s supposed to be with them. The only person missing from the original crew is Molly, and he’s tempted to call her up and tell her to get her ass to the middle of nowhere Arizona, but she’s busy with X-Men stuff and wife stuff and kid stuff because Molly was always the one who was going to have it all. They sort of swore on that a long time ago, him and the others. No matter how crazy all the shit got, they would make sure Molly got the best deal. 

Gert’s at the point of tipsy where she starts to fidget, something she stopped doing ages ago when they first found Old Lace and then just never got back into the habit after they lost the dinosaur. She’s drumming her hands on the table along with the music playing in the background, eyes closed, and if he looks at her like this, he can still see that girl with the purple hair who seemed to tell him to shut up every ten minutes, the girl he never, ever would have thought that he would fall in love with and then went and fell in love with anyway. Shocked every single one of them with that.

It’s the middle of the night, and they’re taking a quick break from tracking down an alien that sort of wants to burrow down into the core of the planet and eat it or something. Chase wasn’t really paying attention to the debriefing, which is one of the reasons why no one has ever brought up the question about leadership again. Like always, he just sort of throws himself headlong into fights without asking a lot of questions although he has gotten better at making sure someone has his back. It’s normally Gert because while she trusts the other Avengers with her life she only trusts herself with his life. But they’re all sitting in this bar in the middle of the night with too many empty pitchers of the worst beer in the world littering the table, and Chase is suddenly thinking about the ring in the pocket he has sewn into the inside of his shirt. Then Gert elbows him gently but with enough force to make him slosh the beer from his cup onto his face, which she cleans off with her tongue. Just like that he forgets about anything other than her and the fact that they’re now making out in front of their oldest friends in the world who are apparently doing the exact same thing. Bonus.

The next morning, Chase regrets everything except the kissing and what came after the kissing once they got upstairs until Nico introduces them to some magic that she can perform anytime and then it’s back out to look for the Chuppa something something. Once they find it, the fight is short and sweet and nowhere near as difficult as he would have expected. It’s pretty much throw shield, knock alien out and let Nico magically bind alien. Bit of a let down all things considered, and Gert’s face indicates that she’s upset with herself for dragging so much of the crew out so he pulls Captain America status and tells them to go home or go out or go something just so long as they’re away and back to report in the next morning before suggesting that they have another Runaways night.

Nico and Karo don’t argue, but there’s a moment where it looks like Gert might so he kisses her. The glare tells him that it’s not a stunt he should pull often, but he knows that. The smile tells him that she loves him, but he knows that, too. 

After a night of weird teleports and too many drinks at too many places while Karo confuses all the locals by constantly taking off and then putting on her power dampener, they end up in Las Vegas. Gert’s quick to tell them no gambling, which is good because with the access to money that she has, things could get messy. They’d either pull enough to wipe out the national debt or completely bankrupt SHIELD. So instead they walk the strip, which is when Chase sees the chapel. They’re all still in uniform, which has made for an interesting night, and the ring he’s been carrying around for what seems like longer than Bilbo had his is doing a sort of Mount Doom pull itself now. Man, sometimes he hates himself for geek speak, but he can blame that bastard Alex for making them watch those movies.

It’s almost perfect anyway. Nico and Karo are there, after all. Molly is going to shoot them, but they’ll figure out some way to appease their kid sister. He doesn’t want to wait anymore. It’s been too long anyway. It’s been forever, and he never knows how much longer they have, especially now that he’s Captain America. Gert always told him about the missions before, but there’s a difference in being there and hearing about it. Not to mention that Gert tends to downplay things. It’s not on purpose. She’s not protecting him—much—, but it’s just the way things are with her. “Saved the world. Order a pizza,” are two sentences that he’s used to hearing when she walks in the door. 

“Hey,” he says, tugs her hand and stops her wandering. Gert doesn’t like to run, but she’ll walk anywhere and everywhere. It’s her preferred method of travel under airplane. All these years gone, and the only thing she can drive is an airplane.

“Hey,” she says back, looking at him like he’s an idiot, but her idiot nonetheless. “Problem, Spangles?” She’s taken to calling him that since he started wearing the suit although Stein is still the most prominent of her jokey nicknames.

Part of him feels stupid and nervous, as anxious as a boy asking the girl he likes to his senior prom, which Chase didn’t get to go to. If he had, he would have taken Gert. Correction. He would have tried to take Gert, but she would have said no. Then they would have gone anyway for five minutes before she said it was inane and they left to wander around and talk for the rest of the night. Like they do. The rest of him just wants to pick her up and carry her and not give her much of a choice because this has been everything for so long that it’s just. It’s a ring and some words, yeah. But it’s gonna be his words and her ring and. Chase feels stupid because he knows that they don’t need it, but he wants it. For a moment he feels like the chick in the movie of his life. Then Gert tilts her head to the side and gives him that look she does when it seems like her eyes can peer right into his mind before she turns to look at the wedding chapel, which is all flashing neon and gaudy. When she looks back at him, Chase knows that she gets it.

She gets it, and she’s quiet now. A different quiet for her, a waiting sort of quiet rather than an up to nefarious things quiet, which is what Gert so often is these days. Saving the world took a very different bent for them once they grew up, and Gert realized that she was going to have to work to change everything from within instead of trying to tear it down from the outside. Chase suddenly wonders why this is so ridiculous because he has to ask her to hold the shield and then get the helmet off and somehow reach his hand into the inside of his suit. None of this is easy, and they’re currently standing on a Las Vegas sidewalk at two thirty in the morning while Karo and Nico are just holding hands and talking. All the other people who pass are so drunk that Chase doesn’t think it’s possible for them to notice anything out of the ordinary.

It takes way too long, but he’s finally got the ring out—and half of his costume off—so that he can get down on one knee and ask the question again, the one he’s joked around with before, the “Will you marry me?” question. Nico and Karo have stopped talking now and are watching. He’s sure that they probably look as full of trepidation as he feels.

“Chase,” Gert says in that way that she normally reserves for him when they’re alone. It’s not a yes, but it’s not a no. The next thing he knows, she’s got the ring on her hand and is fussing with his costume, trying to make it look something close to presentable. 

“Wait,” he says when she takes a step away from him, catching her hand with his own.

She gives him a look like he’s an idiot, and there’s his girl. “If you make me wait, I’m going to change my mind.” As though that’s supposed to make everything clear, which is when Chase realizes that she’s headed in the direction of the tiny, tacky wedding chapel.

They get married. Chase almost gets choked up trying to remember the vows that he wrote one night about seven years ago. Gert’s trying not to look pained because this is all entirely too public for her liking, but she’s doing it because she loves him, which is the reason that she does so much. Maybe she can acknowledge a little bit of meaning it in, but it’s hard to tell with her, especially in the middle of the ceremony when she’s busy being so Gert. Karo and Nico are smiling and taking pictures on their cell phones, which are probably being sent to Molly and Vic and a whole host of other people. Like Steve Rogers who is going to be entirely too smug that he can now call Gert Chase’s wife without getting a lecture. 

“You may now kiss the bride,” preacher Elvis says because, of course, it would be Elvis.

“If you think I’m taking your last name, you’re crazy,” Gert murmurs against his lips when they break for air.

“Yeah. Well. Didn’t they make a hyphen to solve that problem?” he asks with a smirk. Chase feels like there’s nothing in the universe that could make this day bad now. The Negative Zone could open up right here right now with Skrulls pouring out of it, and it would still be a perfect day. Because then there would not only be a wedding but also the chance to kick ass. “Still think you can handle me, Mrs. Stein?” This has become one of their ways of saying “I love you.”

It’s her cue, and he waits because this isn’t a test, he won’t get mad, but he sort of wants her to. And she does.

“Shut up, Mr. Stein.”

Okay. Now it is the perfect day.


End file.
